Harborough churches column: 'How can we trust something we can't see with something so important?'

As another school year comes to an end, I have been thinking about the times we spend waiting for new things to come.

This is particularly poignant as the past academic year has been a time of change and waiting here at the Cube Youth Centre in Harborough with changes of staff and Covid restrictions causing a break from face-to-face youth work.

As young people take a break from school they wait in hope that the new school year will be when they make the best friends, get their best reports, or even that their first year at a new school will just be ok.

We too have taken time to pause, reflect and plan, while waiting in hope for new staff, being able to run groups again, and gain the funding to realise our five-year plan.

Waiting can be painful, especially when you do not know the outcome. While there is hope, doubts can creep in too. The what ifs can be crippling: what if we don’t get the right person for the job, what if we don’t get the funding, what if we don’t have the best group of friends round us, what if … what if.

Putting your faith in God to take control of a situation may seem like a copout or a way of having someone to blame when things don’t go your way. It is a real challenge: how can we trust what we can’t see with something so important to us? Especially when we must accept that sometimes the answer will be no.

It took us three rounds of advertising before we finally got the right person for our administrator role.

The waiting and repeated no’s were disheartening. But we held on to the hope that we would find the right person, and we finally did.

After a time of waiting and hoping in what seemed like quite a desolate place at times, with limited staff and the restrictions of covid, we are finally walking out into a time of blessing. We have been surprised by the abundant generosity of God.

Not only have we been able to restart small group work over the last half term, but it has been received well by young people, their families and schools alike.

And the biggest blessing of all has come in the form of our funding bid to the National Lottery being accepted and funding agreed. It means that we can now move forward with the work we know is needed with our young people and can commit to them for the next five years.

We cannot describe how much this means to us and our young people.

I pray that you too will be able to hold on in hope of things to come in times of waiting, and that the no’s that may come will not discourage or dishearten you. Hold fast in the storms, the sun will return.

Ceriann Kelly is the Youth Work manager at The Cube Youth Centre which is linked to Churches Together in Harborough.